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This study investigates loneliness in life stories by people with disabilities. By approaching loneliness from a relational perspective, this study attempts to illustrate how loneliness and disability are intertwined in the life course. The research question was as follows: How do people with disabilities understand loneliness in their life stories? Life story data ‘Life of Disabled Persons in Finland 2013–2014’ was analysed with a narrative life course approach. Loneliness was narrated in accordance with normative life course expectations. People with disabilities narrated loneliness as unbelonging in childhood, disjointed youth and disaffiliation to normative institutions in adulthood. This study suggests that relation between loneliness and disability concern the conditions of inclusion that is the conditions of living and telling.

• Loneliness involves both unwanted emotions and social isolation. 
• In many societies, both loneliness and disability bear a stigma. This so-called double stigma affects the lives of people with disabilities.
• This study explores loneliness and disability in life stories by people with disabilities in Finland from a life course perspective. Although scholars have widely studied loneliness in Finland, they have not studied loneliness in people with disabilities in any great depth.
• Loneliness in life stories by people with disabilities was narrated in relation to a sense of bodily difference and occurred as a disconnection from a socially ‘standard’ life course. Loneliness was located within three main phases: childhood, youth and adulthood. Negative attitudes towards disability feed social isolation and emotional loneliness.
• Further research on disability and loneliness throughout the life course as well as more discussion about the conditions of inclusion and the emotional patterns of social relations are needed.

There is currently very limited data and evidence on the impacts of COVID-19 on people with disabilities and pre-existing health conditions, with no disability-disaggregated data on mortality rates available in the public sphere. However, reports from the media, disability advocates and disabled peoples’ organisations (DPOs) point to several emerging impacts, including primary and secondary impacts including on health, education, food security and livelihoods.  Most of the available data is from high income countries (HICs) though reports from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are likely to emerge. Evidence was gathered by a rapid desk based review. Gaps are identified. 

The section concerned with lessons drawn from similar epidemics draws heavily on lessons learned from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-2016, and touches on lessons from the Zika outbreak in 2015-2016 and the SARS pandemic in the early 2000s.10 It also touches briefly on SARS, MERS and H1N1 (swine flu). 

Primary and secondary impacts of COVID-19 on people with disabilities are reviewed.

People with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 not only because it can exacerbate underlying medical conditions, but because of attitudinal, environmental and institutional barriers to their participation in and benefit from the pandemic response. For example, inaccessible public health messaging and healthcare facilities, and stigma and discrimination.

This annotated bibliography provides an overview and outlines key messages from a selected range of academic and practioner literature looking at gender and disability in low- and middle-income countries, which may help with planning for gender inclusion in programmes and projects. The papers included here are not intended to be an exhaustive list of all the relevant literature. A focus is placed literature looking at the main areas of work of the Disability Inclusive Development programme: stigma, livelihoods (which also applies to the Inclusion Works programme), education, and health, as well as humanitarian contexts. Literature which focuses solely on one of these areas has been included in the relevant sections, and those which address multiple areas are included in the first, overarching section on gender and disability. As is often the case, the literature on gender and disability in low- and middle-income countries has a tendency to focus mainly on the experiences of women and girls with disabilities. There is a lack of evidence relating to gender and disability in low- and middle-income countries, although more evidence is emerging as awareness of the importance of the issue grows.

People with disabilities face exclusion and discrimination on the grounds of both their gender and their disability, as well as other intersecting factors such as age, race, class or poverty. The intersectional nature of discrimination and inequality impacts all areas of life, from access to services, personal security, livelihoods and leisure, through to individual choice and autonomy. Women and girls with disabilities are more likely to face discrimination and exclusion than people without disabilities and compared with men and boys with disabilities. Their participation in education, livelihoods, and healthcare is challenges by barriers including stigma and cultural practices resulting in discrimination and prejudice, lack of accessible services, and lack of support from family, teachers and institutions - all of which are exacerbated by poverty. Women with disabilities are also at greater risk of physical, mental and sexual abuse and because of stigmatisation, have lower marriage prospects. Therefore, it is important to ensure the meaningful inclusion of women and men with disabilities in programming.

The annotated bibliography is broken down into;

1. Gender and disability in LMICs

2. Gender, disability, stigma, and violence

3. Gender, disability, employment and livelihoods

4. Gender, disability, and education

5. Gender, disability, and health

6. Gender, disability, and humanitarian response

7. Report information

The Inclusion Works programme (2018–2022), funded by the UK Department for International Development, aims to improve employment rates for people with disabilities in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. 

Disability Inclusive Development (DID), also funded by the UK Department for International Development, aims to improve the long-term well-being and inclusion of people with disabilities through increased equitable access to: Quality health services and health outcomes, Quality education and educational attainment, Jobs/self- employment and improved livelihoods and a reduction in negative stereotyping and discrimination in Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Jordan and Nepal.

The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the UK government or members of the Inclusion Works consortium.

This report is a study into the intersection of gender, violence and disabilities, with a focus on the role of disabilities in increasing the risk of sexual and gender-based violence and domestic violence perpetrated against women with disabilities and women parenting children with disabilities in Dushanbe, Bokhtar and Khorog (Tajikistan). The study targeted women and men between the ages of 18-65 living with disabilities or parenting children with disabilities. Field data were collected through 12 focus group discussions (four in each location) divided by age and gender, with men and women living with disabilities or parenting children with disabilities. 30 repeat in-depth interviews were conducted with women and men with disabilities among different age groups, as well as women with children with disabilities.

While marrying was an expected event in 19th-century Western society and has been subject to much historical research, there are few studies on how disabilities influenced people’s marriage patterns and spouse selection. The aim of this analysis is to contribute clarification on this issue by examining with whom disabled men and women married and the marital age and socio-demographic characteristics of them and their spouses. In total, 188 disabled individuals born in the first half of the 19th century and who married in the Sundsvall region, Sweden, are studied. The results reveal that disabled men and women did not marry each other, and they entered into marriage at a slightly higher age than the average, although there was usually no marked age gap between them and their spouse. Endogamous patterns were primarily found regarding the socio-spatial background of the two spouses. This analysis is one of the few studies identifying the mar- riages among a comparatively large number of disabled people using demographic data. Their participation in the partner pool highlight their agency historically and emphasize that disability did not lead to distance from social life in past society.

The extent of the effect of poverty and social exclusion on persons with disabilities in the EU was examined

The report shows how, in all EU countries, persons with disabilities are more likely to be poor and unemployed than persons without disabilities. It presents actions that the EU, it's Member States and other European Countries should take to improve the situation.

Purpose: People with albinism in Tanzania are severely stigmatised. A measurement tool to assess this stigmatisation among adults is lacking. This research aimed at the cultural validation of two Scales to measure stigma related to albinism: The Albinism Social Distance Scale (A-SDS) and the Albinism Explanatory Model Interview Catalogue Community Stigma Scale (A-EMIC-CSS).

Method: Conceptual, item, semantic and operational equivalences were evaluated through focus groups and interviews. A pilot study among adults attending religious institutes, as a representation of Tanzanian society, was conducted to assess the measurement equivalence. There were 101 respondents for the test and 79 respondents for the re-test.

Results: Conceptual, item, semantic and operational equivalences of the Scales are sufficient. In terms of measurement equivalence, the internal consistency of the A-SDS and A-EMIC-CSS are adequate. However, social desirability should be taken into account when interpreting the findings.

Conclusion and Implications: The insights provided by this article can aid in the development of tools to measure stigma cross-culturally and across stigmatising conditions. The combination of the two Scales for short and long-term effect measurement is recommended.

This toolkit serves to highlight the intersection between gender, culture and disability. Following the completion of a study titled Advancing the rights of women and girls with disabilities in Zimbabwe, a review of the interface of culture, gender and disability in Zimbabwe, it was evident that there were cultural and social issues not being adequately addressed in communities. 

This toolkit was formulated based on the study findings, dialogue with key disability stakeholders and principles of the CRPD.

The following is a list of the key articles from the CRPD that form the base of this toolkit:

• Article 3: General principles (8 in total)
• Article 6: Women with disabilities
• Article 8: Awareness raising
• Article 13: Access to justice
• Article 23: Respect for home and the family
• Article 25: Health

This toolkit strives to empower the trainer and the trainee(s) on the virtues encapsulated in the CRPD by localizing the concepts at community level in Zimbabwe.

In the year 2015, Austria was one of the main European destinations of displaced persons. According to education authoritiesaround 15,000 children with a forced migration background of school age who arrived in Austria over the course of a few months from late2015 to the beginning of 2016 called for immediate and partly temporary solutions. Due to Austrian legislation and unlike other countries,every child living in Austria between the ages of six to fifteen (or for nine years of schooling) is entitled to receive compulsory education. Though the school administration of Vienna generally promotes an inclusive approach to education in regular schools, schools inneighbourhoods with a large refugee population were reportedly unable to provide appropriate and adequate education for all children. Inresponse, the local school authority in Vienna decided to establish temporary classrooms in refugee accommodations. This article describesand analyses the emergence of new educational structures from the point of view of university students and lecturers who took part in theone and a half years of its implementation. The article thereby aims to document specific perspectives on educational emergency measuresat a certain point of time. In both the primary and secondary sectors, the emergence of a new temporary field of specialised and exceptional education were observed and recorded in a thick description of dynamic processes of trans-institutional, trans-organisational, transprofessional, communal, and individual development. Thus, the article presents a multifaceted picture of problems in refugee education under exceptional circumstances. The findings illustrate how insufficient educational opportunities for those falling outside the age of compulsory schooling – in particular, preschool children as well as youth older than fifteen – diminish possibilities for the inclusion of these children within and beyond education.